Hit List Puts Pacifist on Offensive

People who live and work in this island city in San Francisco Bay are not surprised they are on the Pentagon’s hit list. After all, their congressman is Ron Dellums, the longtime pacifist who has championed cutbacks in military spending.

And despite the high stakes for their community, some even are amused by the seeming irony in Dellums’ position: the anti-war radical fighting to keep military bases open.

“It’s totally contrary to what he stands for,” said Zacki Quddos, a bank teller in downtown Alameda.

The Pentagon, in its latest round of proposed base closures, has placed Dellums in an awkward position by targeting all four bases in his district.

Dellums, in his fiery and incisive style, has come out swinging. He charges that the Navy’s plan to shut down the Alameda Naval Air Station will cost taxpayers far more than it would save because of the Navy’s unspoken plan to build replacement bases elsewhere.

“I’m not arguing as a hypocrite,” he told reporters recently in his Oakland office. “If you’re going to close a base in my community, do it for the right reasons. . . . I know this is a shell game and we need to smoke it out.”

Some Dellums supporters say the Pentagon’s move is retribution against the Democratic congressman for his years of criticizing the military. And, they say, it is astounding that the Pentagon would target Dellums, who as the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has considerable influence over the military budget.

But Dellums, who has become a master in Congress of military facts and figures, has chosen to fight for his district’s bases on the basis of strategic military necessity and saving the taxpayers’ money.

“I’m not crying foul,” he says. “I’m crying fraud.”

The Navy’s plan would shut down Alameda Naval Air Station, which has berths for three nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The Naval Aviation Depot in Alameda, the Naval Supply Center in Oakland, the Oakland Naval Hospital and Treasure Island--just outside Dellums’ district--also would be shut down.

Dellums said the Navy’s goal is to preserve its fleet of 12 nuclear-powered carriers, with six to be maintained on the West Coast. But without Alameda, he said, facilities would have to be built in Everett, Wash., and San Diego to berth the fleet.

The savings from shutting down the bases in Alameda and Oakland would be “chump change,” he said--$169 million, compared to the $2 billion or so it would cost to build berths in other ports. Dellums threatened to use his powerful post to hold up the new military construction funds if the Alameda Naval Air Station is closed.

“I am not a pork barrelist or a parochialist,” he said. “The military budget has got to come down. And if we’ve got to close bases in our community then we’ve got to close bases in our community. But let the test of that be fair. Let it make good economic sense. And if it does, let’s get on with our lives.”

Whatever the cost to his own district, Dellums said, his goal as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is to win dramatic reductions in military spending now that the Cold War is over. If the Navy would cut its nuclear carrier fleet to eight, for example, the many billions of dollars in savings would be worth closing the Alameda Naval Air Station, he said.

“For 22 years I’ve advocated economic conversion,” he said. “The threat to the United States is hunger and poverty and disease and inadequate education and inadequate health and inadequate housing. Those are the issues that have to be addressed.”

Dellums grew up in the same tough neighborhood of West Oakland that spawned the Black Panther Party.

After serving a stint in the Marines, he went to school on the GI bill and earned a master’s degree in social work. A Berkeley City Council member, he was elected to Congress in 1970 at 34, defeating the liberal Democratic incumbent in the primary on the strength of an anti-Vietnam War, anti-Establishment campaign.

Always outspoken and a consistent advocate of nonviolence, he was branded by Vice President Spiro Agnew as an “out-and-out radical” and made President Richard Nixon’s enemies list.

In 1991, Dellums led congressional opposition to the Gulf War. But during more than two decades in the House of Representatives, Dellums has quietly learned how to make the system work. Early on, he joined the Armed Services Committee and was rewarded for his patience in January when he was named chairman by his colleagues.

While Dellums argues the case from the standpoint of national security, allies in the East Bay are fighting the base closures on the grounds that they would devastate the area’s economy.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a former representative from Marin County who has advocated cutting back the military, is among those who has rallied in defense of the base, saying the Pentagon’s proposal is a disproportionate hit on California. She and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) are pushing a resolution that would make economic hardship a greater consideration in base closure decisions.

East Bay politicians and business leaders are considering a counterproposal that would keep the Alameda Naval Air Station open and move key facilities from the other four bases to the island, allowing the smaller bases to be closed.

Meanwhile Dellums, loaded with an armful of facts, brushes aside suggestions that he is not being true to his long-held beliefs. “I’ve never walked on two sides of the issue,” he says. “I’m truly comfortable because I’m not dancing.”